SPRING ART HISTORY COURSES 2023
CAH 1032 Survey of Art and Architecture II
* * Fulfills the G-PAC Humanities requirement for Critical Thinking
History of art through the study of major monuments, art movements, and concepts in relation to their historical, cultural, political, economic, and religious contexts. Early Renaissance through the Baroque and modern eras. Includes visits to area museums.
Instructor: Prof. Lipinski
Date/Time: M/W 11:10AM-12:25PM
Place: SMITH 114
CAH 2000W Modern Art Worldwide
This course will combine lecture and discussion to examine how modern art developed in the 20th century in different ways around the globe, often through trans-national exchanges between artists and writers, often filtered through local traditions and concerns. We will look closely at artists, movements, and exhibitions, including the 1900 International Exposition in Paris, the African origins of Cubism, Tarsila de Amaral & philosophy of cultural cannibalism (Brazil), Ramsès Younan and surrealism in Egypt, performance art and Gutai (Japan), Bhupen Khakhar and pop art (India), and documenta in 2002. We will look at the way certain movements gained traction and morphed depending on location (e.g. Constructivism, Abstract Expressionism, Conceptualism). Students will have opportunities to work intimately with art in museums and libraries in Washington, DC.
Instructor: Prof. Obler
Date/Time: T/R 11:10AM-12:25PM
Place: SMITH 114
CAH 2113 Early Islamic Art: 7th – 14th Centuries
* Fulfills the G-PAC Humanities requirement for Critical Thinking
This course is an introduction to the art and architecture in the Muslim lands from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to the Mongol period in the 14th century. Art from the Muslim empires covers a diverse range of styles and cultures, ranging from Spain in the west to Central Asia, Iran and India in the east. Focusing on the most common aspects of Islamic art, we analyze monuments and artifacts in their historical, religious, and cultural context. We examine the role of book art, painting, and architecture in forming political and religious identities.
Throughout the course we will make visits to the Freer/Sackler Galleries, study original objects, and discuss topics such as figural and non-figural imagery, religious and secular art, geometry and ornament, female patronage, as well as trans-cultural connections.
All reading materials, including original sources, will be in English. No previous knowledge of Islamic art, history or religion is required.
Instructor: Prof. Natif
Date/Time: T/R 12:45-2:00PM
Place: SMITH 114
CAH 2351 American Architecture II
A lecture survey of buildings in their social, political and urban context. Course begins after the Civil War with the Romanesque Revival of Henry Hobson
Richardson, rise of the skeletal skyscraper in Chicago (Burnham & Root, Adler & Sullivan), Wright and the Prairie School, City Beautiful Movement, American Renaissance (McKim, Mead, White), Art Deco, International Style (Schindler, Neutra, Howe, Lescaze), WPA, Modernism in the Academy (Gropius at Harvard, Mies van der Rohe at IIT), Beton and Brutalism (Le Corbusier, Pei, Kahn, Rudolph), Post-Modern critique (Venturi, Eisenman, Graves, Meier).
Instructor: Prof. Jacks
Date/Time: T/R 9:35-10:50AM
Place: SMITH 114
CAH 2071 Introduction to the Arts in America
Survey of American art from the period of colonial exploration and settlement to the postmodern present; political and social meanings of painting, sculpture, architecture, prints, and photographs; the relationship of art to religion and nationalism; issues of class, race, and gender.
Instructor: Prof. Markoski
Date/Time: M/W 9:35-10:50AM
Place: SMITH 114
CAH 2192 Art of Southeast Asia
Introduction to the arts of visual and material cultures of Southeast Asia covering areas of contemporary Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia, especially Java and Bali.
Instructor: Prof. Lee
Date/Time: M/W 12:45-2:00PM
Place: SMITH 114
CAH 3111 Early Christian and Byzantine Art and Architecture
Instructor: Prof. Williams
Date/Time: M/W 3:45-5:00PM
Place: SMITH 114
CAH 3165 Later Twentieth-century Art
Artists, art, and critical concepts from the later twentieth century; key movements and issues, including abstract expressionism, minimalism, conceptual art, feminism, identity politics, and the rise of globalization.
Instructor: Prof. Dumbadze
Date/Time: Tuesday 5:10-7:40PM
Place: SMITH 115
CAH 3134/CAH 6234: Spain, Portugal & Viceregal America: Convergence of Cultures
This class will focus upon art of the Golden Age in Spain and the colonial Americas, especially the centers of Mexico and viceregal Peru. Tangential discussions also will concern artistic links between Portugal, Brazil, and the Caribbean. My lectures will focus upon the commercial port city of Seville, from the Renaissance to the reign of the Hapsburg King Philip III (1598-1621), inclusive of the humanist Francisco Pacheco and the young Diego Velázquez. I additionally hope to cover Royal Convents (Descalzas Reales and Encarnación in Madrid) and the Portuguese master Josefa de Óbidos, who was influenced by Seville in her devotional art. Lastly, I will consider the distinctive art of the late sixteenth-century Jesuit artist Bernardo Bitti, who sailed to Lima, Peru. Art of primary centers in Hapsburg Spain that attained renown for the private and public display of sacred art will be considered in student presentations -- Toledo, Valencia, Seville, Madrid -- and important painters such as Luis de Morales, El Greco, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jusepe de Ribera, Bartolomé Estéban Murillo and Juan Valdés Leal. Presentation topics also will include Decorative Arts and the Spanish Aesthetic and important sculptors -- Alonso Berruguete (1488-1561), Juan Martínez Montañés (1568-1649), Alonso Cano (1601-1667).
Presentations during the second part of this class will shift to the New World and consider the pre-Columbian heritage in Mexico, Peru, etc. Not only will the persistence of ancient memory in viceregal art and municipal pageantry be addressed, but also the convergence of cultures in Luso America and the Caribbean.
Instructor: Prof. Von Barghahn
Date/Time: Thursday, 12:30-3:00PM
Place: SMITH 106
CAH 4165 / HONR 2048 Women in Islamic Art
As artists, patrons, collectors, and subject-matter, women played important and diverse roles in Islamic art. As elite women, they commissioned monuments and gardens, patronized artists and calligraphers, and had their own libraries. Oftentimes, they were involved in all stages of the artistic production, and like their male counterparts, had access to the myriad of resources in the royal workshops. Women in pre-modern Islamic courts used power and financial means to cultivate art and took active part in political and cultural life.
This seminar will focus on women as the subjects and the creators of art, as well as the patrons of architecture and artifacts. Classes will be organized chronologically and thematically, starting with a historical survey of the status of women in the pre- modern Muslim sphere, of female artists and their artistic contributions, as well as an examination of art history’s exclusions, female portraiture, the female heroine, the nude, and sexuality in illustrations and album paintings.
All reading materials, including original sources, will be in English. No previous knowledge of Islamic art, history or religion is required.
Instructor: Prof. Natif
Date/Time: Wednesday 12:30-3:00PM
Place: SMITH 106
CAH4159/CAH 6225 Urbanism in Rome: Antiquity to the Baroque
Seminar exploring the urban development of Rome from the city of Augustus to the later Empire, then examining the institution of the Church in the medieval period. Focus of the course is on the planning models implemented by the popes from the mid-15th century to the end of the Baroque. The plenary meetings with readings trace in a linear chronology, whereas each student selects one of the fourteen neighborhoods (rioni) to study the synchronic relationships of space and time – piazze, streets, ritual processions, spheres of patronage within the private sector of Rome's noble families.
Instructor: Prof. Jacks
Date/Time: Tuesday, 12:30-3:00PM
Place: SMITH 106
CAH 4189/CAH 6270 Technical Art History Inquiry
This seminar will introduce students to basic concepts underpinning technical studies of tangible cultural heritage, including the fundamental properties of select types of art materials, and current analytical techniques that are used to answer questions about their identity, condition, manufacture, provenance, and/or authenticity. The course will highlight multiple case studies in order to contextualize cultural heritage science within scholarly and conservation inquiries, and to spur discussion about issues that affect technical art history and cultural heritage in general.
Instructor: Prof. Lynn Bristoff
Date/Time: Monday, 6:30-9:00PM
Place: SMITH 106
CAH 4189/CAH 6270 Art Museum: History, Theory, Practice
The history of the art museum is inseparable from an engagement with present‑day museological concerns. Consequently, I plan to approach the history of art museums with an eye to the way museums operate today. We will be interested in every important aspect of museum history: the function of the art museum as a modernizing institution; the roles elites have played in the formation and operation of museums; the semiotics of museum architecture and display; how museums represent the history of art; the viewpoints they inscribe in their exhibitions; their impact on (as well as the ways they construct) their publics; the role of various publics as well as particular constituencies in forming museum policy; blockbusters and corporatization; museum ethics; museum controversies (e.g., over a member of The Whitney Museum board). We will also be concerned with the hold of the past on the present: how past practices and beliefs have shaped today’s art museums. Finally, we will want to ask what museums have done and can do to accommodate and perhaps even promote change. Are art museums inherently conservative institutions? Or are they capable of transcending, or at least modifying, the impact of their own histories?
Instructor: Prof. Wallach
Date/Time: Monday, 9:30AM-12:00PM
Place: SMITH 106
CAH 4189/6245 Courbet and Manet: New Visions
Instructor: Prof. Robinson
Date/Time: Friday, 12:30-3:00 PM
Place: SMITH 106
CAH 6250 Curating Mid-20th Century Abstraction
Instructor: Prof. Obler
Date/Time: Wednesday, 12:30-3:00PM
Place: TBD
CAH 6250 Black Art in the U.S.: The Harlem Renaissance
From 1919 and to the mid-1930s, African American artists, writers, and scholars produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the history of the United States—the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their realistic presentation of what it meant to be black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves,” as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights. In this course we will examine the diverse artistic and cultural artifacts of the Harlem Renaissance in New York, Washington, DC and other cities in America. We will have a guided walking tour of some of the local sites associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
Instructor: Prof. Lipinski
Date/Time: Tuesday 3:30-6:00PM
Place: SMITH 106
CAH 626 The 1990s
Instructor: Prof. Dumbadze
Date/Time: Wednesday 9:30AM-12:00PM
Place: SMITH 106